thoughts on daily life within our family of SIX....each child in her own phase of childhood....

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Happy Birthday, Angel Boy!

What is it to love a little boy? I'm admitting now that for most of my life I had no interest in boy babies or little boys. It seemed that little boys were always holding something unsavory in their hands....or wearing it somewhere or dripping something out of their noses or making some kind of rotten smell. In contrast, little girls smelled sweet (or in my mind they always did) and brought flowers in their chubby little hands, and they stayed away from moist, crawling things and most certainly did not keep them in their pockets.

And then, on this day two years ago, I gave birth to our sweet angel boy, and everything I ever thought about little boys went out the window. For the first time I began to notice the sweet smell of a little boy. The nape of his neck was just the most perfect thing. I began to see all of the things that are totally different in little boys....from birth! This really was the way that God made us...different from birth and different for a reason!

Today I held his hands and asked, "What will these hands do?" He looked innocently at me as I asked him if they would build things, if they would drive a car, if they would cut the grass (his all-time favorite thing to do), if they would hold a baby. As he answered "uh-huh" to everything I asked, I had a glimpse of the future, of the man that he will become and of the legacy that his daddy and I hope to leave behind through our children.

How blessed am I to be the mother of this little boy who is all boy...my little boy who has been intrigued with lawn mowers and weedeaters from the first time that he saw them. How fortunate I am to have him in my life and to have the opportunity to teach him right from wrong, to love him and pray for him as a little boy and for the man that he will one day become.

What in the world have I ever done to deserve such blessings in my life? My suspicion is that I have done nothing to deserve them, but I have been blessed with them all the same. I am overwhemed with the richness in my life because I have not earned it, but it is what I have wanted and more.